This is the most revealing London atlas ever published. `LONDON: The Photographic Atlas' combines the vertical aerial photography of Getmapping.com, creators of the Millennium Map, with Collins' acclaimed street mapping - an unbeatable combination of photography and cartography.

If you live in Greater London, you will already possess a personal stake in this book - within its pages you will be able to find your house, perhaps locate your car parked in the street, trace your route to work, and visit some of your favourite places. On closer inspection you will spot patterns that are invisible from the ground, discover surprising links between unconnected areas, find large areas of greenery that you never knew existed, and explore new neighbourhoods for the first time. Even if you don't know London well, you will find this book fascinating.

The photographic atlas is easy to use. The photography and the cartography share the same standard grid system, meaning you can cross-reference quickly between the two elements; both photography and cartography are 'map accurate', as the photography has been geo-corrected, a process that removes the distortions in the original aerial photography; and throughout the whole book the grid interval is 500 metres, so that distances can be accurately assessed. Finally, every street in Greater London - more than 50,000 in total - has been indexed with two page numbers - one relating to the photography and the other relating to the cartography.

LONDON: THE PHOTOGRAPHIC ATLAS is the first title in an exciting new series of books from HarperCollins Illustrated that tie in the Millennium Map, a contemporary Domesday Book destined to be a social record of the utmost historical importance.